The future of AI is becoming a hot topic of debate among technologists and policymakers as they try to figure out how the technology will develop and how it should be regulated.
ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot that went viral last year, has helped raise awareness of AI as many large companies around the world have launched or will launch competing products.
Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council conference, former Google CEO Schmidt expressed concerns about AI, calling the technology an “existential risk,” meaning that many people could be harmed or killed. According to Schmidt, these scenarios have not yet happened, but could happen in the short term as AI systems find unexploited vulnerabilities in cyberspace or discover new biological species.
These things sound like science fiction today, but they are possible. When they do happen, we need to be ready to ensure they are not misused, he said.
Schmidt, CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, has not had a clear view on how to manage AI, saying only that it is a “big question for the whole society”.
He is not the first technologist to warn about the risks of AI. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has admitted to being “a little scared” of AI. He worries about authoritarian governments developing the technology. Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that AI represents one of the “biggest risks” to civilization.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai believes AI will impact every product the company makes and society needs to prepare for the changes.
Schmidt is a member of the National Security Commission on AI in the US. The agency began assessing the technology in 2019. In 2021, the commission released a report showing that the US was not prepared for the AI era.
(According to CNBC)
Source
Comment (0)